The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

 This blog has now moved. You can view this new post by clicking below: The Adventure of the Golden Arches by Dan H In which I share my love for a fast food chain... Read on Substack

 This blog has now moved! You can read the new post by clicking below:  The Adventure of the Feline Friend by Dan H In which I get a new flatmate... Read on Substack

In which I reflect and regroup... I am not going to lie, 2024 has been tough so far. You begin a year with such high hopes and sometimes the year decides to take those high hopes and crush them in the most brutal way.  I'm currently enjoying the tranquility of the summer holidays and a rest that has perhaps never felt quite so well-earned. Perhaps the best piece of advice I was given during the many training sessions I have had over the last few years is to make the most of the resets in your life. That might be small resets, as small as a few seconds in the middle of the day or they might be bigger resets like six weeks off work.  Part of this reset has been getting outside. The year so far has not been helped by the endless miserable weather. We always like to joke in the UK that it rains a lot but this year has taken that to the next level. We often think of climate change as meaning we will get hotter weather but it just means that the weather will change and will get more extr

The 2024 Oscars ceremony is mere hours away and I've finally finished writing my annual post about this year's Best Picture nominees. This is my sixth year doing this and once again I've seen all the nominees. Let's take a look! American Fiction Thelonius 'Monk' Ellison, played by Jeffrey Wright who is perhaps best known as Felix Leiter in the Daniel Craig Bond films, is an intelligent African-American professor and writer whose high-brow books sell poorly. Frustrated, he writes a satire of "black" books which is unexpectedly taken by the publishing world to be a serious piece of literature. It's a hilarious film with Wright having lots of fun taking on Monk's alter-ego. At the same time though it's also a clever critique of the sort of media that is consumed by white people to make them feel better about racial issues and the film points out that black people can have normal lives beyond ghettos and gangs- the film itself also tells an ord

In which I reflect on the year that was... I awoke in a cold sweat in the early hours of Boxing Day. I was staying at my Mum and Dad's for the first time since last Christmas and found my heart racing after an anxiety dream. These are not unfamiliar to me, usually some real-world based scenario that causes great anxiety and can leave me feeling unsettled for much of the day. Sometimes my brain struggles to develop original programming for dreams and so will broadcast a repeat. This dream was a replication of a dream I had exactly a year before and was based around going on teaching placement and being completely shit. Due to dream logic being non-sensical, my brain was able to fill in the gaps it had last year because said experience is now in the past rather than in the future.  As I said, anxiety dreams can leave me feeling unsettled for a fair portion of a day when they occur. Not this time. I blinked my eyes open and realised I was in my old bedroom at my Mum and Dad's hous

It's time for my list of the best films of 2023. Films eligible for this list are those that were released in cinemas or on steaming in the UK during 2023- this means there could be some films that were released in 2022 in the US and that there might be films from other lists online that are conspicuously absent here because they have yet to have a UK release (I'm looking at you Poor Things ). I've also included where you should be able to see each film should you be so inclined. 10: Pearl (Rent Online) I enjoyed Ti West's 2022 horror film X  but it turned out he secretly made a prequel at the same time. Pearl sees Mia Goth reprise her role as the villain from X. In 1918 Pearl is living on an isolated farm during the Spanish Influenza and she is desperate to escape and become a dancer. It takes cues from the Golden Age of Hollywood with inspiration like The Wizard of Oz , though Pearl's interactions with a scarecrow are somewhat different from Dorothy's. Whilst

In which I share some wildlife highlights... Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing some end-of-year posts. As you may know, I am very much into my wildlife and I have been very lucky to have had some utterly incredible wildlife encounters in 2023. To avoid this being a novel-length post I've kept it down to ten moments and they are, more or less, in chronological order.  Red Squirrels I managed to attend an event on the beautiful Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour back in April, an early morning walk before the island is usually open to the public. This in itself was great but we could stay after the walk had finished and the island was still very quiet as it had only just opened. Brownsea Island is home to one of the few populations of red squirrels in the South of England. This is our native species of squirrel that has been lost from the majority of England due to the arrival of grey squirrels from North America. Early morning in April is the peak time to see them and I heade